PROF ED.

2
The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
OVERVIEW OF THE CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 1: Introductory Perspective of Child Psychology and the Study of Human Development

Human Development
• Human development is the science that seeks to understand how and why the people of all ages and
circumstances change or remain the same over time.
• The United Nations Development Programme defines human development as "the process of enlarging people's
choices,"
Measuring Human Development
• Human Development Index (HDI), formulated by the United Nations Development Programme which encompasses
statistics such as life expectancy at birth, an education index, and gross national income per capita.
WHY HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND INCOME?
• These three core capabilities are universally valued around the world, and measurable, intuitively sensible, and
reliable indicators exist to represent them.
A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE
• The most valuable capability people possess is to be alive.
• Advancing human development requires, first and foremost, expanding the real opportunities people have to
avoid premature death by disease or injury, to enjoy protection from arbitrary denial of life,
• to live in a healthy environment, to maintain a healthy lifestyle, to receive quality medical care, and to attain the
highest possible standard of physical and mental health.
ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE
• It is a critical determinant of long-term well-being and is essential to individual freedom, self-determination, and
self-sufficiency. Education is critical to people’s real freedom to decide what to do and who to be. Education
builds confidence, confers status and dignity, and broadens the horizons of the possible.
A DECENT STANDARD OF LIVING
• Income is essential to meet basic needs like food and shelter—and to moving beyond these necessities to a life
of genuine choice and freedom.
• Income enables valuable options and alternatives, and its absence can limit life chances and restrict access to
many opportunities.
• Income is a means to a host of critical ends, including a decent education; a safe, clean living environment;
security in illness and old age; and a say in the decisions that affect one’s life.

Three Domains of Human Development

• The three domains of human development that begin with infancy and can be seen as the body, mind and soul
of a person.
The Biological Domain
• also referred as physical development, is the most visibly obvious domain. It is when physical strength is built
up, a sense of balance is learned, coordination evolves and motor skills are developed.
The Cognitive Domain
• It is the mental part of the developmental process that goes on in the brain.
• Each person develops at the individual's own pace so no two people develop at the exact same pace.
• It incorporates thinking, learning and language skills and also includes creativity and imagination.
• A large part of the development in this domain happens by the age of 11.
The Psychosocial Domain
• It is the development of social skills and emotions. It's how a person feels on the inside as reflected on the
outside through social connections.
• This is where a person's personality forms although some temperament traits are innate due to genetics.
• A person develops feelings, self-esteem and how to get along with others, develops a sense to recognize the
feelings of others and to have empathy.
Biopsychosocial Development
• It is the three domains together. They influence one another and are dependent on each other.
• If a person doesn't receive adequate food and nutrients, the biological development will be affected.
Child Study
• It is also called paidology or experimental pedagogy
• It was the attempt to apply the methods of modern science to the investigation of children in order to discover
the laws of normal child development.
• The connection between child study, schools, teachers, and movements for educational reform was particularly
strong, because many reformers viewed the educational system as the most promising avenue to improve the
conditions of children and to create the conditions for a better and more just society.
• child study became the science of child development and became a field of academic inquiry and lost its ties to
social and educational reform.

Child development theories

• focus on explaining how children change and grow over the course of childhood. Such theories center on various
aspects of development including social, emotional, and cognitive growth.
• Why do children behave in certain ways? Developmental psychologists strive to answer such questions as well
as to understand, explain, and predict behaviors that occur throughout the lifespan.
• Child development that occurs from birth to adulthood was largely ignored throughout much of human history.
• Children were often viewed simply as small versions of adults and little attention was paid to the many advances
in cognitive abilities, language usage, and physical growth that occur during childhood and adolescence.
• Interest in the field of child development finally began to emerge early in the 20th century, but it tended to
focus on abnormal behavior.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

1. Behavioral Perspective
• Behaviorists believed that psychology needed to focus only on observable and quantifiable behaviors in order to
become a more scientific discipline.
• All human behavior can be described in terms of environmental influences.
• Some behaviorists, such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, insisted that learning occurs purely through
processes of association and reinforcement. These theories deal only with observable behaviors.
Behaviorism is based on the assumption that:
• All learning occurs through interactions with the environment
• The environment shapes behavior. Two important types of learning that emerged from this approach : classical
conditioning and operant conditioning.

Classical conditioning
• Discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan
Pavlov, it is a learning process that
occurs through associations between
an environmental stimulus and a
naturally occurring stimulus.
• In Pavlov's classic experiment with
dogs, the neutral signal was the sound
of a tone and the naturally occurring
reflex was salivating in response to
food.
• By associating the neutral stimulus with
the environmental stimulus (presenting
of food), the sound of the tone alone
could produce the salivation response.

How Does Classical Conditioning Work?

• There are three basic phases:
Phase 1: Before Conditioning
• the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) results in an unconditioned response (UCR).4
• For example, presenting food (the UCS) naturally and automatically triggers a salivation response (the UCR).
• There is also a neutral stimulus that produces no effect - yet. The previously neutral stimulus is repeatedly
paired with the unconditioned stimulus.
 Phase 2: During Conditioning
• As a result of this pairing, an association between the previously neutral stimulus and the UCS is formed.
• At this point, the once neutral stimulus becomes known as the conditioned stimulus (CS).
Phase 3: After Conditioning
• Once the association has been made between the UCS and the CS, presenting the conditioned stimulus alone
will come to evoke a response even without the unconditioned stimulus.
• The resulting response is known as the conditioned response (CR).4

Key Principles of Classical Conditioning

1. Acquisition
• It is the initial stage of learning when a response is first established and gradually strengthened.
• a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (something that naturally and
automatically triggers a response without any learning). After an association is made, the subject will begin to
emit a behavior in response to the previously neutral stimulus, which is now known as a conditioned stimulus.
2. Extinction
• It is when the occurrences of a conditioned response decreases or disappears. It happens when a conditioned
stimulus is no longer paired with an unconditioned stimulus.6
3. Spontaneous Recovery
• It is the reappearance of the conditioned response after a rest period or period of lessened response.7
4. Stimulus Generalization
• For example, if a dog has been conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell, the animal may also exhibit the
same response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus.
• In John B. Watson's famous Little Albert Experiment, for example, a small child was conditioned to fear a white
rat. The child demonstrated stimulus generalization by also exhibiting fear in response to other fuzzy white
objects including stuffed toys and Watson own hair.
5. Stimulus Discrimination
• Discrimination is the ability to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not
been paired with an unconditioned stimulus.9

Operant Conditioning
• aka instrumental conditioning; is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for
behavior. Through this, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.
• For example, when a lab rat presses a green button, he receives a food pellet as a reward, but when he presses
the red button he receives a mild electric shock. As a result, he learns to press the green button but avoid the
red button.
The History of Operant Conditioning
• it was coined by behaviorist B.F. Skinner, (Skinnerian conditioning); the term operant to refer to any "active
behavior that operates upon the environment to generate consequences."
• he believed that it was not really necessary to look at internal thoughts and motivations in order to explain
behavior. Instead, he suggested, we should look only at the external, observable causes of human behavior.
• His theory was heavily influenced by Edward Thorndike’s work called the law of effect (actions that are
followed by desirable outcomes are more likely to be repeated while those followed by undesirable outcomes
are less likely to be repeated). It relies on a fairly simple premise - actions that are followed by reinforcement
will be strengthened and more likely to occur again in the future. If you raise your hand to ask a question and
your teacher praises your polite behavior, you will be more likely to raise your hand
• actions that result in punishment or undesirable consequences will be weakened and less likely to occur again in
the future.; If you shout out an answer in class and your teacher scolds you, then you might be less likely to
interrupt the class again.

Types of Behaviors
Respondent behaviors are those that occur automatically and reflexively, such as pulling your hand back from a hot
stove or jerking your leg when the doctor taps on your knee. You don't have to learn these behaviors, they simply occur
automatically and involuntarily.
Operant behaviors are those under our conscious control. Some may occur spontaneously and others purposely, but it
is the consequences of these actions that then influence whether or not they occur again in the future.
Skinner
• He created a device known as an operant conditioning chamber, most often referred to today as a Skinner box.
• The chamber was essentially a box that could hold a small animal such as a rat or pigeon. The box also contained
a bar or key that the animal could press in order to receive a reward. In order to track responses, he also
developed a device known as a cumulative recorder which recorded responses as an upward movement of a
line so that response rates could be read by looking at the slope of the line.
Components of Operant Conditioning
1. Reinforcement is any event that strengthens or increases the behavior it follows. There are two kinds of reinforcers:
Positive reinforcers
• are favorable events or outcomes that are presented after the behavior. In situations that reflect positive
reinforcement, a response or behavior is strengthened by the addition of something, such as praise or a direct
reward. For example, if you do a good job at work and your manager gives you a bonus.
Negative reinforcers
• involve the removal of an unfavorable events or outcomes after the display of a behavior.
• In these situations, a response is strengthened by the removal of something considered unpleasant.
• For example, if your child starts to scream in the middle of the grocery store, but stops once you hand him a
treat, you will be more likely to hand him a treat the next time he starts to scream. Your action led to the
removal of the unpleasant condition (the child screaming), negatively reinforcing your behavior.
2. Punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that causes a decrease in the behavior it follows.
There are two kinds of punishment:
Positive punishment
• referred to as punishment by application, presents an unfavorable event or outcome in order to weaken the
response it follows. Spanking for misbehavior is an example of punishment by application.
Negative punishment
• also known as punishment by removal, occurs when a favorable event or outcome is removed after a behavior
occurs. Taking away a child's video game following misbehavior is an example of negative punishment.

Reinforcement Schedules
• The timing and frequency of reinforcement influenced how new behaviors were learned and how old behaviors
were modified. Different schedules of reinforcement that impact the operant conditioning process:
1. Continuous reinforcement involves delivery a reinforcement every time a response occurs. Learning tends to occur
relatively quickly, yet the response rate is quite low.
2. Fixed-ratio schedules are partial reinforcement. Responses are reinforced only after a specific number of responses
have occurred.
3. Fixed-interval schedules are partial reinforcement that occurs only after a certain interval of time has elapsed.
4. Variable-ratio schedules are partial reinforcement that involve reinforcing behavior after a varied number of responses.
5. Variable-interval schedules are which involves delivering reinforcement after a variable amount of time has elapsed.
Examples of Operant Conditioning
• After performing in a community theater play, you receive applause from the audience. This acts as a positive
reinforcer inspiring you to try out for more performance roles.
• You train your dog to fetch by offering him praise & a pat on the head whenever he performs the behavior correctly.
• A professor tells students that if they have perfect attendance all semester, then they do not have to take the
final comprehensive exam. By removing an unpleasant stimulus (the final test) students are negatively
reinforced to attend class regularly.
• If you fail to hand in a project on time, your boss becomes angry and berates your performance in front of your
co-workers. This acts as a positive punisher making it less likely that you will finish projects late in the future.

Edward Thorndike
• famous in psychology for his work on learning theory that lead to the development of operant
conditioning within behaviorism. Skinner wasn’t the first psychologist to study learning by
consequences. Indeed, Skinner's theory of operant conditioning is built on the ideas of Edward Thorndike.

Edward Thorndike Connectionism theory

• gave the original stimulus response framework of behavioral psychology
• he explained that learning is the result of association forming between stimuli and responses
• Such associations or “habits” become strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency of the S-R pairings.
Connectionism theory three laws: Thorndike’s theory consists of three primary laws:
(1) law of effect – "responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur
again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in
that situation
(2) law of readiness – a series of responses can be chained together to satisfy some goal which will result in
annoyance if blocked, and
(3) law of exercise – connections become strengthened with practice and weakened when practice is discontinued.

• Thorndike studied learning in animals (usually cats). He devised a classic experiment in which he used a puzzle
box to empirically test the laws of learning.
• Thorndike would put a cat into the box and time how long it took to escape. The cats experimented with
different ways to escape the puzzle box and reach the fish.
• Eventually they would stumble upon the lever which opened the cage. When it had escaped it was put in again,
and once more the time it took to escape was noted.
• In successive trials the cats would learn that pressing the lever would have favorable consequences and they
would adopt this behavior, becoming increasingly quick at pressing the lever.
• After much trial and error behavior, the cat learns to associate pressing the lever (S) with opening the door (R).
• This S-R connection is established because it results in a satisfying state of affairs (escape from the box).
• The law of exercise specifies that the connection was established because the S-R pairing occurred many times
(the law of effect) and was rewarded (law of effect) as well as forming a single sequence (law of readiness).

Edward Thorndike Principles

• Learning requires both practice and rewards (laws of effect /exercise)
• A series of S-R connections can be chained together if they belong to the same action sequence (law of
readiness).
• Transfer of learning occurs because of previously encountered situations.
• Intelligence is a function of the number of connections learned.

Psychodynamic Perspective
• It refers to the theories and therapies developed by Sigmund Freud and supported by his followers.
• emphasizes unconscious psychological processes and contends that childhood experiences are crucial in shaping
adult personality. Its basis is to understand what is going on in the mind of an individual or "to get in the head"
of a patient to see what is going on in the unconscious part of the mind.
• It also states that a lot of our behaviors and preferences of adulthood are shaped by the experiences in our
childhood.

Some examples of assumptions that drive the psychodynamic approach are:

• The unconscious is one of the most powerful affects on behavior and emotion.
• No behavior is without cause and is therefore determined.
• Childhood experiences greatly affect emotions and behavior as adults.
• The id, ego, and super-ego make up personality.
• The drives behind behavior are a) the lift instinct and sex drive and b) death instinct and aggressive drive.
• Various conflicts throughout childhood development shape overall personality.
• unconscious motives and desires, fears and anxieties drive one’s actions When upsetting memories or thoughts
begin to find their way into our consciousness, we develop defenses to shield us from these painful realities.
• Freud believed that many mental illnesses are a result of a person’s inability to accept reality. Some examples of
behaviors and their explanations using psychodynamic perspective include:
• Obsessive hand washing could be linked to a trauma in childhood that now causes this behavior
• Nail-biting may be caused by an anxiety inducing childhood event
• A childhood event that caused fear in an open space may trigger agoraphobia in an adult
• Rituals of nervousness such as completing a task a certain number of times (such as opening and closing
a cabinet) could be linked to a childhood situation
• Skin picking and hair plucking are a compulsion that would be linked to a developmental trauma
• Compulsively counting footsteps could be linked to an incident in childhood
• Any irrational behaviors can be blamed on childhood instances of trauma or development
Sigmund Freud
• considered to be the father of psychiatry
• Freudian theory of personality
• Human Personality: The adult personality emerges as a composite of early childhood experiences, based on
how these experiences are consciously and unconsciously processed within human developmental stages, and
how these experiences shape the personality.
• Not every person completes the necessary tasks of every developmental stage. When they don’t, the results can
be a mental condition requiring psychoanalysis to achieve proper functioning.
• he placed emphasis on the five stages of psychosexual development. These stages are:

Stages of Development
Oral (0 – 1.5 years of age):
• The infant meets needs primarily through oral gratification. A baby wishes to suck or chew on any object that
comes close to the mouth. Babies explore the world through the mouth and find comfort and stimulation as well.
• Psychologically, the infant is all Id.
• The infant seeks immediate gratification of needs such as comfort, warmth, food, and stimulation.
• If the caregiver meets oral needs consistently, the child will move away from this stage and progress further.
• However, if the caregiver is inconsistent or neglectful, the person may stay stuck in the oral stage.
• some oral activity such as eating, drinking, smoking, nail-biting, or compulsive talking bring comfort and security
when the person feels insecure, afraid, or bored.

Anal (1.5 to 3 years of age):

• coincides with toddlerhood or potty-training, the child is taught that some urges must be contained and some
actions postponed. The child is learning a sense of self-control. The ego is being developed.
• If the caregiver is extremely controlling about potty training the child may grow up fearing losing control.
• He may becoming fixated in this stage or “anal retentive”-fearful of letting go. Such a person might be
extremely neat and clean, organized, reliable, and controlling of others.
• If the caregiver neglects to teach the child to control urges, he may grow up to be “anal expulsive” or an adult
who is messy, irresponsible, and disorganized.

Phallic (3 – 5 year of age):

• the child has a new biological challenge to face.
• Freud believed that the child becomes sexually attracted to his or her opposite sexed parent.
• Boys experience the “Oedipal Complex” in which they become sexually attracted to their mothers but realize
that Father is in the way. For awhile, the boy fears that if he pursues his mother, father may castrate him. So
rather than risking losing his penis, he gives up his affections for his mother and instead learns to become more
like his father, imitating his actions and mannerisms and thereby learns the role of males in his society. From this
experience, the boy learns a sense of masculinity. He also learns what society thinks he should do and
experiences guilt if he does not comply. In this way, the superego develops. If he does not resolve this
successfully, he may become a “phallic male” or a man who constantly tries to prove his masculinity (about
which he is insecure) by seducing women and beating up men!
• A little girl experiences the “Electra Complex” in which she develops an attraction for her father but realizes that
she cannot compete with mother and so gives up that affection and learns to become more like her mother.
Freud believed that the girl feels inferior because she does not have a penis (experiences “penis envy”). But she
must resign herself to the fact that she is female and will just have to learn her inferior role in society as a
female. However, if she does not resolve this conflict successfully, she may have a weak sense of femininity and
grow up to be a “castrating female” who tries to compete with men in the workplace or in other areas of life.

Latency (5 – 12 years of age):

• the child focus his or her attention outside the family and toward friendships.
• If the child is able to make friends, he or she will gain a sense of confidence.
• If not, the child may continue to be a loner or shy away from others, even as an adult.

Genital (12 – adulthood):

• final stage of psychosexual development
• From adolescence throughout adulthood a person is preoccupied with sex and reproduction.
 • The adolescent experiences rising hormone levels and the sex drive and hunger drives become very strong.
• Ideally, the adolescent will rely on the ego to help think logically through these urges without taking actions that
might be damaging.
• An adolescent might learn to redirect their sexual urges into safer activity such as running, for example.
• Quieting the Id with the Superego can lead to feeling overly self-conscious and guilty about these urges.
• Hopefully, it is the ego that is strengthened during this stage and the adolescent uses reason to manage urges.
• Within this theory the ability of a person to resolve internal conflicts at specific stages of their development
determines future coping and functioning ability as a fully-mature adult.

Theory of the Mind

• Freud believed that most of our mental processes, motivations and desires are outside of our awareness.
• Our consciousness represents only the tip of the iceberg that comprises our mental state.
• During development, our motivations and desires are gradually pushed into the unconscious because raw
desires are often unacceptable in society.

Theory of the Self

ID
• As adults, our personality or self consists of three main parts: the id, the ego and the superego.
• part of the self with which we are born. It consists of the biologically-driven self and includes our instincts and
drives. Later in life, it comes to house our deepest, often unacceptable desires such as sex and aggression.
• It operates under the pleasure principle which means that the criteria for determining whether something is
good or bad is whether it feels good or bad. An infant is all ID.
Ego
• part of the self that develops as we learn that there are limits on what is acceptable to do and that often, we
must wait to have our needs satisfied.
• This part of the self is realistic and reasonable. It acts as a mediator between the Id and the Superego and is
viewed as the healthiest part of the self.
• It knows how to make compromises and operates under the reality principle or the recognition that sometimes
need gratification must be postponed for practical reasons.

Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising
from unacceptable thoughts or feelings
• We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel
threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding. It operate at an unconscious level and help
ward off unpleasant feelings or make good things feel better for the individual.

How Do Defense Mechanisms Work?

• The id is the part of personality that seeks to fulfill all wants, needs, and impulses. It is the most basic, primal
part of our personalities and does not consider things such as the social appropriateness, morality, or even
reality of fulfilling our wants and needs.
• The superego tries to get the ego to act in an idealistic and moral manner and is made up of all of the
internalized morals and values we acquire from our parents, family members, religious influences, and society.
• In order to deal with anxiety, Freud believed that defense mechanisms helped shield the ego from the conflicts
created by the id, superego, and reality. So what happens when the ego cannot deal with the demands of our
desires, the constraints of reality, and our own moral standards?
• According to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid. Anxiety acts as a signal to the
ego that things are not going the way they should
• As a result, the ego then employs some sort of defense mechanism to help reduce these feelings of anxiety.

Types of Anxiety
• Neurotic anxiety is the unconscious worry that we will lose control of the id's urges, resulting in punishment for
inappropriate behavior.
• Reality anxiety is fear of real-world events and its cause can easily identified. For example, a person might fear
receiving a dog bite when they are near a menacing dog. The most common way of reducing this anxiety is to
avoid the threatening object.
• Moral anxiety involves a fear of violating our own moral principles.3
While all defense mechanisms can be unhealthy, they can also be adaptive and allow us to function normally.
The greatest problems arise when defense mechanisms are overused. In psychoanalytic therapy, the goal may be to
help the client uncover these unconscious defense mechanisms and find better, healthier ways of coping with anxiety.

Defense Mechanism
1. COMPENSATION
• it is the process of masking perceived negative self-concepts by developing positive self-concepts to make up for
and to cover those perceived negative self-concepts.
• For example, if you think you are an idiot, then you may work at becoming physically more fit than others to
make up for this shortcoming by compensating for it in another area of human activity.
• The reasoning is that by having a good self-concept about being physically fit, you can then ignore, cover, or
even negate your negative self-concept about your reasoning capability.

2. DENIAL
• It is the subconscious or conscious process of blinding yourself to negative self-concepts that you believe exist in
you, but that you do not want to deal with or face.
• It used often to describe situations in which people seem unable to face reality or admit an obvious truth
• Denial is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring.
• Drug addicts or alcoholics often deny that they have a problem, while victims of traumatic events may deny that
the event ever occurred.
• For example, a family may pretend and act as if their father is only sick or having a hard time when it is evident
to everyone that he is an abusive alcoholic. The negative self-concept for each family member comes from
identifying with the father because he is a part of the family; the father cannot be viewed as a negative image,
or everyone else in the family, too, will be considered to be that negative image.

3. DISPLACEMENT
• It is when you express feelings to a substitute target because you are unwilling to express them to the real
target. The feelings expressed to the substitute target are based on your negative self-concepts about the real
target and yourself in relation to the real target. Example of it are “Crooked anger” or “dumping”
• The safer target can be someone below you in rank or position, someone dependent upon you for financial
support, or someone under your power and control.
• Generally, alternate targets are targets that cannot object or fight back as opposed to actual targets that might
object and fight back. For example, the father comes home from work angry at his boss, so he verbally abuses
his wife and children. This process is often seen in bureaucracies: abuse and blame are passed down the ladder.

4. IDENTIFICATION
• It is the identification of yourself with causes, groups, heroes, leaders, movie stars, organizations, religions,
sports stars, or whatever you perceive as being good self-concepts or self-images.
• For example, you may identify with a crusade to help hungry children so that you can incorporate into your ego
some of the good self-images associated with that crusade.

5. INTROJECTION
• It is the acceptance of the standards of others to avoid being rated as negative self-concepts by their standards.
• For example, you may uncritically accept the standards of your government or religion to be accepted as good
self-concepts by them.

6. PROJECTION
• It is the attribution to others of your negative self-concepts.
• involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people.
• For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead believe that he does not like you.

7. RATIONALIZATION
• involves explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, avoiding the true reasons
for the behavior. It is sometimes referred to as the “sour grapes” response when, you rationalize that you do not
want something that you did not get because “It was lousy, anyway.”
 • For example, A student might blame a poor exam score on the instructor rather than his or her lack of
preparation.
• When confronted by success or failure, people tend to attribute achievement to their own qualities and skills
while failures are blamed on other people or outside forces.

8. REACTION FORMATION
• It is the process of developing conscious positive self-concepts to cover and hide opposite, negative self-
concepts. It is the making up for negative self-concepts by showing off their reverse.
• For example, you may hate your parents; but, instead of showing that, you go out of your way to show care and
concern for them so that you can be judged to be a loving child.
• An example would be treating someone you strongly dislike in an excessively friendly manner in order to hide
your true feelings. According to Freud, they are using reaction formation as a defense mechanism to hide their
true feelings by behaving in the exact opposite manner.

9. REGRESSION
• It is the returning to an earlier time in your life when you were not so threatened with becoming negative self-
concepts.
• You return to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an earlier developmental stage to identify yourself as you
used to back then. People act out behaviors from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are
fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing
unpleasant news.
• According to Freud, an individual fixated at the oral stage might begin eating, smoking excessively, or might
become very verbally aggressive. A fixation at the anal stage might result in excessive tidiness or messiness.
• Another example, you may be being criticized as an adult and feeling horrible about it.
• To escape this, you revert to acting like a little child

10. REPRESSION
• It is the unconscious and seemingly involuntary removal from awareness of the negative self-concepts that your
ego finds too painful to tolerate.
• For example, you may completely block out thoughts that you have of wanting to kill one of your parents.
• Repression is not the same as suppression, which is the conscious removal from the consciousness of intolerable
negative self-concepts.
• Unconsciousness was Freud’s renaming of the spiritual concept of internal darkness. Repression is a choice, but
a decision that we choose to remain unaware of as part of the defense of repression.
•
11. RITUAL AND UNDOING
• It is the process of trying to undo negative self-concept ratings of yourself by performing rituals or behaviors
designed to offset the behaviors that the negative evaluations of you were based on.
• This involves trying to make up for what one feels are inappropriate thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. If you hurt
someone's feelings, you might offer to do something nice in for them in order to assuage your anxiety.
• For example, a millionaire might give to charities for the poor to make up for profiting from the poor.
• Alternatively, a parent might buy his or her children many gifts to make up for not spending time with them.

12. SUBLIMATION
• It is the process of diverting your feelings about the negative self-concepts that you have of yourself or others
into more socially acceptable activities.
• For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might take up kick-boxing as a means of venting frustration.

Other Defense Mechanisms

• Affiliation: This involves turning to other people for support.
• Aim Inhibition: In this type of defense, the individual accepts a modified form of their original goal (i.e.
becoming a high school basketball coach rather than a professional athlete.)
• Other Defense Mechanisms
• Altruism: Satisfying internal needs through helping others.
• Humor: Pointing out the funny or ironic aspects of a situation.
• Fantasy: Avoiding reality by retreating to a safe place within one's mind.
Theory of the Self:
Superego
• part of the self that develops as we learn the rules, standards, and values of society.
• This part of the self takes into account the moral guidelines that are a part of our culture.
• It is a rule-governed part of the self that operates under a sense of guilt (guilt is a social emotion-it is a feeling
that others think less of you or believe you to be wrong). If a person violates the superego, he feels guilty.
• The superego is useful but can be too strong; a person might feel overly anxious and guilty about circumstances
over which they had no control.
• The id is inborn, but the ego and superego develop during the course of our early interactions with others.
• These interactions occur against a backdrop of learning to resolve early biological and social challenges and play
a key role in our personality development.